


Sharpe's Stand (or Richard Sharpe and the Bridge at Vera)

by lakester



Category: Sharpe (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lakester/pseuds/lakester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the battle of the Pyrenees, Richard Sharpe and the men of the South Essex are drawn into intelligence work in the north of Spain at the behest of a newly returned Major Hogan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sharpe's Stand (or Richard Sharpe and the Bridge at Vera)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gentlezombie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlezombie/gifts).



It was a nice horse. The bay stood maybe one and a half hands higher than his own mount. Loyal too. The man that Major Hogan supposed to have been its rider. Right up until he departed this fair green earth for a head-first plummet to the ground on his way to whatever place the man's sorry soul might make its eternal rest. The man - French by his uniform - was sprawled on the ground.

Hogan eased himself out of the saddle, more slowly and carefully than he would have done only months earlier, but a wound was a wound and they took longer to heal from these days.

The body was lying half in the bend of the dried up riverbed that the exploring officer had been following, some hours too late to find out anything from the Frenchman himself, through he crouched by the body to take a closer look through his belongings.

In life, the Frenchman had been tall, and, from his jacket, a member of Napoleon's elite light infantry. His black shako had been trodden into the ground and its feathers worried by his horse, his rifle within reach, but unfired. Clearly not an encounter with British or Portuguese troops – no equipment missing – and he would have been in a much worse case if the Spanish had had him.

The officer had fallen forwards, and been dragged further. Scratches and bruises scraped at the meat of his face, but there'd been little scavenger damage.

“So, who are you then, my lad?” he mused. There was barely a track, and the French line was – last he'd heard – far to the north, “And what were you doing here?”

\---

It was not raining on the Oricain ridge. It hadn't rained for days and Sharpe had heard, ignored and sometimes agreed at the grumbling of his men as the accompanying cavalry force had taken water for their mounts.

Not now. Now the hillside just below the Oricain ridge was littered with the fallen – mostly French but still far too many British – and the not quite fallen dead. Most of those would be soon, the friendless, the French and those not worth the ransom, helped on their way with a blade as they protested the loss of either their boots or their booty. The dirt had been stirred by boots, hooves, and even the wheels of the light artillery pieces, but had, even slicked with blood, settled without ever reaching the glutinous pitch that made the best attempts at movement into a shaky stumble.

Sharpe turned his head from the hours old battlefield to the sky above his head – where a bright blue stung the eyes, and the sun was a stubborn ball of light which pressed them half shut against a stabbing brightness that almost distracted him from the pain in his shoulder. Almost.

“Ah!” Sharpe winced. “Watch what you're doing with that!”

“Oh, but I am, Major, sir,” Patrick Harper's customary low burr was muffled as he bit the end off a piece of thread. The other end had been stitched into the meat of Sharpe's shoulder, looping together flesh that'd been parted by the edge of a French sabre. “You wouldn't want to see me try this blindfolded.”

“Couldn't be much more bloody awkward,” Sharpe complained, eyeing the few stitches patchworking his right shoulder.

“Now, if you wanted it neat, I could have rustled up one of the lasses.” Harper said, unperturbed. “And if you wanted to lose the arm, I could've found one of the surgeons.” Surgeons were all very well in their place, but Patrick Harper was a happier man when that place was somewhere very far from him and his. When his time came he wanted to be breathing the coolness of the Irish air, surrounded by a horde of wee Harpers. Failing that, he'd take a quick death at the hand of a Frenchman over the lingering mess of the surgeons' tent – there should be someone happy at the manner of his dying, if only for those few moments before he felt the Major's sword in his neck.

Still, both of them had been closer to dying than they were now. Lucky's what they were, luckier than those men they'd lost today – and that was new men, a most. Little chance to get to know them, and that might be easier than young Perkins dying in front of him, but it was no less of a waste. Harper took short bladed knife from one of the many places he secreted them, and sliced off the end of the thread again, closer to Richard's skin this time.

“Thanks, Pat,” Sharpe said, and took a swig from the French officer's flask. It was a pretty little thing, almost the size of his fist, enamelled blue and something that glistened too brightly to be silver. It was also, Sharpe gasped as he sprayed a mouthful of the lousy drink out and swore with an outraged, “Bloody teetotalling Frog!” full of lukewarm, almost salty water.

Sharpe tipped out the rest of the contents of the canteen, and scraped a thumb at the raised metal edging. Whoever the left-handed blighter in the fancy jacket had been - he'd thrown first his sword and then anything he had to hand before he bolted - he'd had the initials 'EG'.

“Here,” Sharpe tossed the flask at a Cooper. He caught it one handed as the other was turning a pair of rabbits over the campfire. Most of the Chosen Men and some of the South Essex had straggled back there in the aftermath of the battle.

Anderson hadn't, but then Phillips had sworn that he'd seen the left half of the Scot's face blown clean off within minutes of the first clash with the French infantry. Phillips was an unregenerate liar who was bloody awful at it, which was why Sharpe had believed him and why Ramona had departed for the baggage train in a flurry of skirts – Annie Jenkins had a belly on her and some hard decisions that needed making.

Right now, however, “What do you think that's worth, Cooper?”

Cooper turned his attention away from the rabbits – both of which “I'd just found in me pockets, sir.” Cooper's pockets, if a man was to believe half of what he'd 'found' in them, would have needed to be the size of a wagon. He glanced at the flask, turned it upside down, and shook his head sadly. “Nothing but rubbish, there,” he said, with a shrug. He turned back to the rabbits and jabbed at one with a knife. The knife came away clean and he reached out to pull them one-handed off the makeshift spit.

Sharpe caught Cooper's right wrist in his left hand. “But my rubbish, I think you'll find, Cooper.”

There was a ripple of tired laughter around the group as Cooper passed it back with a, “Look what I found, sir! You really ought to be more careful with that.”

\---

Wellington's tent had been pitched one-third of the way along the ridge, larger than those pitched by the men and far enough back to allow the defenders to manoeuvre, but still close enough to the front to allow a man with a telescope a wide view of the battle before him. Provided of course that he didn't care for the risk an enterprising sniper – which admittedly were few in Marshal Soult's army. Soult was a skilled general – and Wellington could admit that, as well as the fact that at this point it was Soult's defeat which would probably be key to seeing the French forced out of Spain and harried back to Paris – but he did not like improvisation, he did not like change, and his attitude had percolated through the ranks from which he had once risen.

What Wellington, however, did not like was tardiness, which meant that what he currently did not like was, “Where the hell is Sharpe, Major?” as he frowned at the reports coming in from his scouts, skirmishers and Spanish partisans.

Munro looked up from the sketches he'd been studying. Engineers had been crawling over the ground around San Sebastian, trying to work out why the last siege had failed – to which point they had produced many diagrams and more reports – and how the next one might be successful – in which regard their information was much sparser. He considered his answer. “Spain, I should think, my lord.”

“Spain?” A man could not cut simply with the edge of his voice. But then Arthur Wellesley had done many things in the last few years that one might have considered impossible. He would not be standing this close to the Franco-Spanish border if that were not the case.

“Yes, I think so,” Munro maintained his air of unruffledness. It was a force of habit to retain in himself a complete lack of surprise - There's no better way to get a man to tell you something than to make him think you know it already, he would say. Oft-times men would think they were only confirming what others had told, thinking it a much lesser sin to break where others had already fallen. Not always, however, so he merely said, “In it, perhaps, but I think more likely on it.” Munro sighed, “I expect the Major is probably celebrating, sir.”

“He can celebrate when I-”

The tent flap was tugged back, an interruption as Sharpe ducked into the tent. Which was really quite ridiculous, as tall as the man was – seemingly taller than Wellesley himself - the roof of the tent was taller still.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” Sharpe was slightly bedraggled. His green jacket was fastened, but haphazardly and as if laced by a man clumsy with drink.

He was bare-headed and a clip from a desperate French youngster who'd been reduced to thrashing about with the butt of his musket had left Sharpe with a smeared and bloody bruise and loosened teeth but little memory of the youth's passing. He stood with the concentrated steadiness of a man who had made some way into drink, but not as far as he had meant to reach and turned from Wellington to nod at Major Munro.

The material of the tent was light, but Munro was standing in the shadows. The Major was a man for shadows and darkness, collected them, broke them apart and made them into weapons. Now, however, he simply looked up and said, “Richard.”

“Finally, Major Sharpe,” And the rank wasn't old enough for him to lose the thrill of it, nor were the last few months enough to dull the memory of the crispness wrapped in mild indignation of Wellington's voice.

“Alive then, are you, Sharpe?” continued Wellington. The straight-backed man looked as if he fitted behind the small desk far less well than he had sat upon a horse confident in daring his men to do their utmost and carry the day for him. The desk made him look smaller - this small desk, upon which was balanced too large a butcher's bill for any commander's liking, no matter how victorious the battle.

“Yes, sir,” Sharpe blinked. “At least I think so, sir.” He smiled, and tugged at his collar with his right hand. “I could be mistaken, but I've come a lot closer to it than this.”

“Yes, well,” Wellington looked down at his papers. “Do your best to keep it that way. There aren't enough men like you in this army that I can afford to have you laid up for weeks at a time, dead or napping.” He looked up again, to where Major Sharpe stood, neither dead, nor – quite – dead on his feet, and took another breath. All his men were valuable to him – not priceless, but all of them worth something – though some of them more than others, no matter how infuriating they could sometimes be.

“Congratulations on the promotion, sir,” Sharpe interrupted Wellington before his thoughts formed into words.

“My, well, yes, it's not a- of course,” the new Field Marshall said, adding. “If it persuades those devils in Whitehall to send me more men and money enough to pay them, then it might be actually worth something.” He paused and rallied himself. Thinking of that craven group of politicians was a task only to be done when necessary. “But thank you, Major, and on yours too.” He took a moment to regain his line of thought. “Anyway, in the interests of keeping you useful and with any luck still alive, I have further orders for you, Sharpe. You'll be taking the first two companies of the South Essex to reinforce General Hayes on the Bidassoa. Major?”

Munro unrolled a map, pointing out the thin straggle of a river. “Hayes's division is here,” he said, blunt fingers tapping a point a couple of inches above the river, the division's strength marked in carefully with inked letters almost faded to brown. “Freire's men are here.” His hand moved a few inches south and west, indicating the Spanish forces arrayed almost to the coast. “We only have a limited amount of intelligence, but it suggests sporadic French patrols here-” – north – “-and here.” – south west. “Though that may change in the light of Soult's retreat.”

“But that's east, sir,” Sharpe looked up from the map to Wellington. “I thought we were going back to San Sebastian.”

“We are,” said Wellington, testily. “You are not. Good god, man, I need engineers to crack San Sebastian. I don't have enough infantry that I need to feed General Rey the remains of your half-strength battalion.”

“You'll need infantry to climb those walls,” Sharpe responded, stung into defence of his men, his company, his friends and his dead who had gone where they had been ordered, thrown themselves into the fire at his command. “It won't be sappers that go through the breach, nor engineers who'll take the streets. It'll be us.”

“Damn it, man,” said Wellington. “The South Essex is shedding men like- like-”

“Fleas off the back of a dog, sir?” Munro interjected. Both men turned to look at the intelligence major. “Or the feathers off a chicken, or the skirts off a whore?”

Wellington frowned and turned back to Sharpe. “I will need men, but it will be men who follow orders, Sharpe,” answered Wellington, he rose, uncoiling from behind his desk. He ignored the twinges borne by arms and legs too long held in one position, much as he did the shifting of the fragily balanced papers. “I'm not only fighting the French army at the coast. Soult may be licking his wounds but he can't afford to hold back for long. Bonaparte will not welcome a retreating French army across the Pyrenees. So you'll go to Hayes and you'll damn well bolster his forces in the region. I can't afford any weak points along the northern frontier.”

“Is General Hayes a weak spot? Sir.” Sharpe was damn close to Wellington and damn close to insolence, but Sharpe came close to that merely by breathing.

“The General is- a steady man,” Munro said. “He's-”

“He's cautious,” barked Wellington, interrupting his exploring officer's more careful description. “That's not a bad thing for an officer to be, so long as it's in moderation. Still, you'll place yourself and the bulk of your men at his disposal while remaining under my command. I understand you still have Captain D'Alembord?”

“We do, sir,” said Sharpe. The young captain had one arm in a sling and the other around Mackenzie – the young second lieutenant – as the young Scot emptied his guts out, when Sharpe had left him.

“Then Captain D'Alembord holds the reserve company until your reserves arrive.” Wellington continued. “They are on their way?”

“I've asked for them, sir.” Normally the job of the colonel, but lacking him Sharpe had sent the request. He looked off into the middle distance, forcing the sudden hope off his face with a huge effort of will. “And the colonel, sir, are we to receive a new colonel?”

“Yes, I imagine so.” Wellington saw Sharpe's eyes tighten. “Come on, Sharpe,” he said. “You've been a major for how long?”

“Brevetted for almost a year,” Sharpe answered. The shine hadn't worn off his majority, but against the possibility of his own regiment in fact rather name? “Seems longer.”

“Well, it isn't,” Wellington said, retaking his seat and quashing Sharpe's barely articulated hopes. “Still newly brevetted, you can hardly expect a promotion on seniority.” Sharpe shook his head reluctantly. “Or through purchase?” He cocked a sardonic eyebrow.

“No.” Sharpe shook his head. A brevet major was only paid as a captain when the army could afford to pay him at all. Most of Sharpe's fellow officers drew on family wealth where they could and borrowed and gambled where they couldn't. Sharpe had none of the former and enough luck at the latter to make most games of chance a one time event, with a reasonable chance of provoking a challenge from some young hot-head who didn't believe that they could have lost honestly. Some of the time they even had.

“Then you have your orders, Major,” Wellington said, dismissing him.

“You'll leave at first light,” Munro added. He folded a smaller, sparser map into quarters and handed it to Sharpe.

“All right,” Sharpe nodded and turned to leave. He reached the door flap and had his hand to it when Wellington called his name.

“Sharpe!” Sharpe turned. “I may not be willing to have your life thrown away needlessly against the walls of San Sebastian, but I will spend the lives of you or any man in this army in an instant should it become necessary to defeat the forces of Bonaparte and of France.”

\---

“Sorry, sorry,” said an almost familiar and almost Irish sounding voice as a short, sturdy and almost entirely hooded figure bustled out of Richard's tent and buffeted straight into Richard's good shoulder.

“Who are-” Sharpe reached out to grab the arm of the man, bringing down the pile of papers almost obscuring the other man's face.

“Not a word, Richard.” Major Hogan's eyes looked out from the depths of the hood. “Not a word.” He turned and pushed his head back into the tent, made a few remarks just out of Richard's hearing, before he turned and bustled on and out, accompanied by the low rustle of papers and leaving behind the lower rumble of the Gaelic. Richard couldn't speak a word of it, but he'd recognise Pat Harper's voice across a battlefield and straight into his bones, and not merely for the sergeant being one of the loudest men Richard knew, when he put his mind to it.

He pushed his way into his own tent, smaller than Wellington's in every way, even before taking account of the space taken up by the six and a half feet of Donegalman perched on the end of Richard's camp bed.

“What was Major Hogan doing here, Pat?” Richard asked.

Patrick Harper nodded at the covered pot resting on Sharpe's rickety chair and ignored the question. “Ramona says you're to eat that before you fall down.”

“She does?” Sharpe let himself be diverted as he took the warmed pot between his hands, taking the weight on his good arm and rolling his injured shoulder against the unexpected strain of the extra weight.

“Something like that,” Harper said, obligingly shuffling out of the way as Sharpe thudded down on the bed. “And the major said,” He paused.

“And what did the major say?” Sharpe looked up, spoon halfway to his mouth.

“Well, after commiserating on the sorry fate that it is to be an Irishman in this army full of the English...” Harper caught Richard Sharpe's eye and changed tack toward the general vicinity of the point. “He wanted to ask you to take a parcel with you to General Freire. Said Major Munro had told him we'd be going thataway. Said it was important, there, sir.”

“He said,” Sharpe grumbled around his soup. “So now I'm a bloody mail coach.”

Patrick shrugged. “Said, the parcel was in the way of being a fellow, something of a gentleman who'd gone by the name of Martin, when he was in the Voltigeurs and had been attached to Major Ducos.” Harper said, as if the information was of no interest whatsoever.

“What!” It was hard to exclaim around a mouthful of vegetable, and a waste of Ramona's cooking and that poor excuse for a chicken. But Richard – the Major - had made an attempt that avoided choking, so he did, and that was all that could really be expected of a man.

“So, I'll be seeing you in the morning, sir,” Harper said as he ducked out.

“Bloody Irishmen the lot of you!”

\---

It wasn't possible to move the best part of a regiment, even one as depleted as the South Essex, through miles of the Spanish countryside without anyone knowing they were there. A few men, certainly, a company, perhaps, but with more men than that it was a matter of making sure as few people as possible became aware of the passage of army boots, the clink of gun-metal and the rattle of hooves; that no-one cared, or at least no-one who cared might survive long enough to tell of it.

The men had strung out along their route. Captain Frederickson had given the lot of them orders not to be a bunch of silly bastards, and Sharpe had sent Hagman and Harris to scout on ahead, without specified the degree of silliness or bastardry that he expected of them. The river was an occasional flash of silver grey to the north as the column tramped its way east.

Sharpe had felt obliged to walk within sight of the rickety carriage that bore their French 'guest'. He had not felt sufficiently obligated to board the carriage himself.

Harper appeared at Sharpe's side, and cast a glance at the carriage, bouncing on its wheels as Thomas, who, unlucky enough to be both new to the company and Welsh, had found himself driving the two nags masquerading as carriage horses. The cock-eyed nag on the left was the worst - she was easily distracted by grass, birds and her own front hooves, but while both horses were in agreement that they wanted to go 'away' from the carriage neither of them agreed in which direction 'away' was.

“I'm sure the Major would have mentioned it if he thought it was important, sir,” Harper said.

“Of course it's bloody important,” Sharpe argued, trotting to keep pace with the carriage wheels.

“Might've slipped his mind though.” Harper contemplated the slow slope of the land as it unrolled out in front of him.

“Although it does make more sense of what he said - about the ice and the bandages,” Patrick went on brightly.

“Harper,” said Sharpe, through teeth that were not gritted only because that meant he would have to breathe through his nose. “We are escorting a shagging corpse halfway to Navarre in order to chuck it in a river.”

“I'll grant you it doesn't sound like one of Major Hogan's best ideas,” Harper nodded as he swung along at a steady pace, “But the gentleman's hardly in any state to go throwing hisself into a river.”

\---

They'd come three days out of the camp before the last of the ice packed around the sacking in which the late Voltigeur had been wrapped had melted. A damp reddish trail had valiantly dribbled its way across the last couple of miles, but had now come to a sorry stop.

“I reckon here'll do.” Sharpe said.

Here was a outcrop over the river. Sharpe kicked at the earth beneath his feet. Dark stone was topped with a thin layer of earth and a thinner layer of grasses.

He nodded at William. “Bring them in, Captain.”

Captain Frederickson bellowed the order to halt and the South Essex began to assemble, most of the men standing in groups, talking quietly, trading jokes and tobacco. Harper detached himself from a group of Riflemen, shifting his gun from one shoulder to the other and came to his customary position at his Major's left hand as he looked down at the rushing waters.

“It's a long way down,” he said.

That it was. The river was narrow enough to run fast, and wide and deep enough – Sharpe hoped – that the body wouldn't catch on the rocks beneath the surface. It'd be a bloody waste of time if Martin's later than last days were spend rotting in a backwater, the papers that Hogan had patted into Sharpe's greatcoat when he'd handed over the body left unread. “Stating the obvious just a bit there, aren't you, Sergeant?”

“Oh no, sir,” Harper replied. “If I wanted to do that, I'd say it's a bloody long way down.”

Sharpe nodded. “All right,” he said, turning to the men of the South Essex as he raised his voice. “You, you and you,” he shouted, pointing out three men from the front rank. “With me.”

Sharpe hadn't had a lot of experience of moving bodies, particularly the long dead. They dropped where they fell and if they weren't one of his, he didn't care. Oft times even if they were one of his, he didn't have time to care. Rarer still - rarest - was when they fell and he just stopped moving, like there wasn't anything for him to do but to fall and keep falling with them, like maybe one day he could catch them up if he just tried hard enough. Worst were the days when he thought he never would.

Moving Voltigeur Martin's corpse was less personal and more a matter of pulling, shoving, and trying not to put a hand somewhere that squelched too much to get a decent grip.

The four men heaved him out of the coach and peeled the sacking away. Martin looked like a two days dead corpse, which Sharpe supposed was an improvement - him having been dead for five days that Sharpe knew about and possibly more that he didn't.

Hogan's papers were wrapped in an oiled flax. Sharpe tucked them into the officer's jacket. Piper and Leroy lifted the body up by the shoulders – Foster was losing the remains of his breakfast to the amusement of the rest the men – while Sharpe pulled a belt under Martin's chest, and nodded, “Down.”

The two soldiers dropped the body to the ground and Sharpe fixed the belt as tightly as he could pull it. It wasn't quite normal dress for the infantryman, whose jacket, a faded blue, gaped around what must have been his last wound. It was, however, held in place securely enough that the letters wouldn't be lost.

“Harper, come and make yourself useful.” Sharpe called.

With the big sergeant taking the legs - “Are you sure he needs his boots?” “Yes, Pat,” “Both of them, now?” - and Piper and Leroy one arm each, the late voltigeur was moved to the edge of the outcrop.

Sharpe called out and the soldiers swung the body up and out. It sailed over the middle of the river, arms and legs spinning almost as if the Frenchman was alive. It dropped with something of a splash and the body disappeared under the fast flowing water. It bobbed up a few yards up, sunk again, and resurfaced still farther on. Sharpe's fingers went reflexively to the telescope that wasn't there any more, and his heart to the woman that would never be there again, clenching his hand into a fist. If what they'd done today would inconvenience Ducos in even the slightest it would have been time well spent.

“I think we need to go now, sir,” Patrick's steady voice behind him was an anchor, turning him back, away from the river.

“Come on, Pat,” Sharpe said, clapping his sergeant on the back. “The sooner we're at Hayes' camp, the more likely we are to get back to some proper soldiering.”

“Proper soldiering, yes sir,” said Harper. “That'd be more in the way of making the corpses and less the taking them out for a jaunt.”

“If we're lucky, Harper, if we're lucky.” Sharpe headed back to the men.

“And when are you not, sir?” Harper asked the retreating figure as he shouldered his gun and followed on behind. "When are you not?"

\---

And though today my life is done,  
I cannot yet lay down my gun,  
Until my body strikes the quay,  
Over the hills and far away

\---

The sky above Sharpe and his men cracked open. A jagged flash of lightning split the darkening sky leaving a glowing afterimage in its wake.

Sharpe swore under his breath. Then once and twice more, louder for emphasis against the torrents of rain that hammered down. He tugged his greatcoat around his body in a vain attempt the preserve some dryness.

Sharpe had led four patrols out in as many days, having decided it was best for all concerned, but most particularly for the unbroken state of General John Hayes's nose, that he spent as little time in camp as possible. Still, he'd insisted on sending out cavalry with them, might as well have their way lit with drums and sounded with beacons, but who is the commanding officer here, Sharpe?

The general's enthusiasm had palled though, leaving this patrol escorted by a lone cornet. Reynolds was standing beside him, where he had attempted to shelter in the lee side of a horse that was bigger than he was. The confection of his red and yellow was a bright smear in the half-light, a light spot against the mottled and dusty greens and greys of Sharpe and his Rifles.

“Should we go back, sir?” The young dragoon raised his voice against the rising wind.

“Too far,” Rifleman Hagman shuffled forward, his rifle carefully done up, but his cap plastered to his head, and his hair carelessly straggled and hanging forward in rats-tails.

“Not afraid of getting your feet wet, Dan?” Sharpe turned to look at the Chosen Man.

“Not my feet, no.” Hagman replied slowly. “Can't take a spark, can't make the shot, sir,” he said. “Wouldn't like to try a firefight in something like this.”

“No sense in the French being out in weather like this,” Cartwright said, taking his cap off and trying to wrench water out of its sodden weight. “Got more sense, they have.”

“Not much use for us out in it for the rest of us either,” Harper said, a voice out of the gloom as he walked up from the rear of the group. “But if time was there was any sense in this man's army, then it was gone a long ways back.”

Sharpe ignored the low voices and conversation behind him. He looked at the hills ahead; empty, greying in the evening light. No sign of a hamlet or isolated house clinging to southern slopes. The odd cluster of stubborn trees, growing out almost horizontal would be no use. “The French aren't spoiling for a fight with us, lads. We head back,” he said. “Take the first shelter we can find.” 

Sharpe slung his rifle back over his shoulder and clapped the side of Reynolds' grey. “Well, move your feet!”

–--

“Well,” said Sergeant Harper, as he looked out over the bridge from the relative dryness of the second floor of what had been a very nice house once.

He stood with his back to the wall, head tilted to see out without being seen. Parker had been less careful, more unlucky and was now busy making a mess of the old senhora's rug. Still it'd been red and all already, so it could be worse. “At least it stopped raining.”

“Wonderful,” Sharpe said, lying on the floor beside Parker, hands bloody as his fingers fumbled on a makeshift tourniquet for the soldier's left arm. Not much he could do about the mess the stray ball had made of Parker's face, except listen to the pained gasps and trust that the blood had washed away clean. There had been enough of it.

Shots cracked out from the neighbouring house where there were three windows facing the bridge, the highest one at an angle from which the French, making a scramble of their way down the back and forth trail, couldn't reach.

Harper sank down and settled on his haunches. He picked up Parker's rifle. Poor bugger hadn't even had a chance to take a shot. He turned, aimed at the huddle of blue jackets clumped together at the far side of the bridge and took a shot. It looked as if someone had gone down, but Harper didn't stop to check, already halfway through the process of reloading – ramrod down the barrel – when Sharpe looked up from Parker, lapsed and barely conscious.

“Next time,” Sharpe said, counting the men gathered at the far side of the bridge, the men trailed down the switchback path and tried to guess at the numbers still to stream over the top of the ridge. “We get our bloody feet wet.”

“Yes sir,” Harper said, swing round for another shot, and the turning back after he fired. “Wet feet it is, sir.”

They traded a few more shots back and forth with the French, the smoke of the guns turning the remaining light into shadows. 

“We're not,” turn and fire and down and turn, “going to stop them like this.” said Sharpe, as a lucky French bullet chipped the ledge of the window and kicked up plaster and wooden splinters.

“Then, go sir,” Harper had reverted to his usual gun, using the kick to duck back between shots. It hadn't the range of the Baker, but it caused more damage to the French, all clumped together but still held on the southern end of the bridge. “Parker and I can hold them off, can't we man?”

Parker was propped upright. Makeshift bandages were already stained reddish-brown and his grip on his weapon was shaky at best, but he nodded and made an incoherent noise of agreement.

Sweet William's men were barely visible from their window, as the regular firing of the South Essex, sent pulses of smoke and bullets from behind their make-shift barricade towards the oncoming French. The sounds though, the sounds echoed upwards.

“Go, sir,” Harper took his eyes off his gun to look Richard in the eye. “We'll still be here when you come back.”

“You're a damned idiot, Patrick Harper.” Richard Sharpe said, before passing his loaded rifle over. “You'll need this.”

“Aye, sir.” Harper said to the beat of Sharpe's feet on the stairs, and turned to take his next shot.

\---

There were too many men and too little light. The Rifles and the South Essex could hold them for a while. But it was almost dark. Eventually the French would sneak men across that the British would not see and the fight would get very bloody very quickly. Reynolds should have made it back to Hayes almost an hour ago. With more men - grenadiers and light infantry - then the British could hold the French if not indefinitely then as near to it as they liked. Without reinforcements it was a matter of time before they would have to run.

Sharpe left the shelter of the house he'd been sharpshooting from, glancing up at the window as he ran, close to the edge of the building. 

He didn't have far to go. On the north side of the river, which still spun and smashed high against the bridge supports, there were a cluster of men blocking the only exit off the bridge. Only a few feet wide, the French could only feed a few men through at a time, and they crashed onto the guns of the British.

Frederickson was at the rear of the group, sending the men in relays to the nearest two houses. Inside to reload, outside to fire, inside to reload, again and again. The Rifles were scattered in the upper storeys of nearby houses, picking off anyone they could.

“Sir, sir!” Sharpe turned at the sound of hooves splashing into shallow pools of water.

Reynolds looked dishevelled. At some point on the short journey to camp he'd lost his hat and rode bare-headed, slipping from the saddle as his horse whinnied in protest.

“The General's compliments, sir,” he started.

“Never mind his bloody compliments, where the hell are the rest of you?” There was no sound of marching boots, or even cavalry, who might be near to useless in the confines of the village but whom Sharpe would have welcomed as more warm bodies to throw at the French.

“No reinforcements, sir,” Reynolds looked apologetic in the flickering torchlight. “But the General says you are to retreat.”

“I'm to what?” Sharpe bit out.

His horse whinnied in protest and Reynolds' hands automatically went to soothe her. “I'm sorry, sir. But the general was very clear and Colonel Delrae. You are too retreat.”

“Then the colonel is a damn fool, and the general a worse one,” Sharpe plastered himself against the wall as a spray of French shots, more co-ordinated than they had managed before, ricocheted off the track on which the British held the line. “And you can tell them that.”

“I'm quite sure that I can't, sir.” The young cornet looked awkwardly at his feet. Then feeling that something more was called for, he said, “Sorry, Major.” and stepped back into the centre of the road. For a moment he was a silhouette lit in shadow and flame, and in the next moment Cornet Reynolds, dragoon, was laid on the cobbled track, his knees bent the wrong way and a trail of blood – almost black in the uncertain light – dribbled from the side of his torn open mouth.

Sharpe cursed the French, the general, and the weather in resounding terms. He pulled Reynolds' body out from the centre of the track, and checked his breath. Gone, in a sticky spray of blood and bubbles.

Right. Nothing he could do here. His eye fell on the torch, whose flickering light almost made it seem as if the body on the ground in front of him was still breathing. He pulled the brand from its sconce on the side of the building – large enough and fancy enough to be a church – and headed to the bridge. 

The bridge might be made of stone, and the timbers of the town damp and drying from the rain, but there was enough in this town to burn. Sharpe would make sure of it. 

\---

Those men of the South Essex who could run, ran. Those who could carry their mates who couldn't, did so. Those who couldn't do either held on for as long as they could, piled up French bodies that bought dearly every step.

Sharpe, with a blazing brand in one hand and a bloody sword in the other was one of the last out of the small, crowded cluster of streets littered with French and British dead. His eyes squinted in the flickering dark, cursing the idiocy of command in general and the general in particular. “Bloody idiot, it would be better if it was him lying here, dead. I've half a mind to do it myself,” he told the last of the flames and darkness as he backed out of the burning village.

“Ah,” said a familiar voice at his back, the large figure slowly coming into focus as an Irishman almost as bloody and bedraggled as himself. “You'll be needing your rifle for that then, sir,” said Harper, and Sharpe's face broke into a tired, bloody but relieved grin.

**Author's Note:**

> Where TV and book canon cannot be reconciled, I have taken TV canon. That places this story between the events of 'Sharpe's Sword' and 'Sharpe's Regiment', late in the summer of 1813.
> 
> Firstly, my apologies to Captain Daniel Cadoux, and those men of the 2/95th Rifles whose place and efforts I have displaced with those of Sharpe and his men.
> 
> Following his defeat in the Battle of the Pyrenees Marshal Soult went on to launch what would be his final assault on the heights on San Marcial, then held by the army of General Freire, on 31st August 1813. His attempt to break through the Spanish lines and raise the siege of San Sebastian failed, with the result a resounding Spanish victory. 
> 
> Finding the river impassible and seeking an avenue of retreat north, some of the French army made their way to the bridge at Vera, held by a small company of British light infantry. Heavily outnumbered, Cadoux's Rifles delayed the rearguard of General Vandermaesan, but were repeatedly refused reinforcements by Major General Skerrett and the British force was eventually overwhelmed, suffering the losses of several men – including Cadoux – killed or wounded.
> 
> The men of the South Essex may have been a little luckier, but the French army, though in disarray, is not yet beaten. So, Sharpe and Harper will march again.


End file.
